Point transaction; but he decided to postpone sending for the girl. She was impulsive and quick-tempered, suspicious where Mr. Boland was concerned. She would be difficult to reason with; she was a dear little thing and he did not want to hurt her. But just at this juncture, Lahleet's card was sent in to him again.
"The little minx," he commented. "She must have just been hanging around the corridors till she saw me come back." It was the first time in their acquaintance that he had not been spontaneously glad to see her; yet the first sight of the girl was reassuring.
"Henry!" she cried cheerily, and came bounding to him as if on moccasined feet upon her island. "Henry! You have told him? . . . You have blocked the Shell Point deal? . . . You have saved their millions of oil for them? What did he say? How did he take it?" But the stream of naively gloating interrogation was halted. The girl had read something in Harrington's face. "You . . . you didn't tell him!" she panted in dismay. "You have fallen down!" She uttered the words hollowly, unbelievingly, as hoping to be assured that her deduction was false.
"Mr. Boland showed me that the deal was all right," answered Harrington with some dignity.
"All right!" . . . Lahleet breathed the speech slowly. "All right? . . ." she whispered whitely, and sank into a chair, staring at the lawyer with great bewildered eyes. "All right? . . ." she said a third time.
Henry found this white, staring iteration difficult. He wished she had flown into a tantrum, raged, sworn, denounced him, anything but this appalled manner, this stunned incredulity in which shattered faith and regret were mingled so poignantly.
